The Fire Protection Podcast: Episode #36 – AIM Act / Clean Agent Phase Out

Drew's Outro (1:08:20)

Full Transcript

Drew Slocum:

This is episode 36 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Today, my guest is John Demeter. John is the president of Westco. Westco is a halon and clean agent recycling company. They sell and take in a lot of refurbished halon and other clean agents. He’s a great guest to talk about the AIM act and what’s happening in the clean agent market regarding the HFCs and phasing out of those. So it’s finally happening in the next month or so. It will come in 2022. John’s got a lot of information about what the special hazards industry’s gonna be doing moving forward. And, you know, we get into a lot of different topics throughout the podcast. It was great to have John on.

I’ve wanted to have him on for a long time now. He’s been in the industry for a while, a number of years, heavily involved at the FSSA, the Fire Suppression Systems Association, as well as NAFED. So it was great to talk to John and learn what he’s learned himself over the years. I know it’s been a few months since we’ve had a live guest on, so more of that is coming in 2022. So stay tuned. And, quick plug on, Inspect Point. Obviously, we’re, we’re moving ahead with a lot of different features and innovations, but, uh, we are doing a really cool holiday contest this month. So it’s; obvious ugly sweaters are a big thing during the holiday season. So we’re doing something where submitting your ugly deficiencies from your fire protection inspections, send them to joanne@inspectpoint.com. And we’re having a contest that we’re awarding next week. So, um, yeah, hope all is well have a great holiday, and onto the podcast. Alright, cool. Okay. Well, thanks, John, for coming on the podcast today. I haven’t done a live one like this in a while. Good. So I appreciate you.

John Demeter:

Well, thanks for having me, Drew. I’ve been looking forward to this. I think it’s this, what you’re doing is a great contribution to the industry. You know, we took that step into this information as a technical agent. I think this is a great thing to do. I hope it only grows and grows for you, and whatever we can do to help you, we will, we will. Yeah.

Drew Slocum:

I know you talked to me at the NAFED conferences last year, and then you put us in one of your newsletters out there. So, I’d love to kind of stay on top of that and have some fun stuff coming out in 2022.

John Demeter:

Yep, yep, yep. For sure. For sure. Absolutely. Well,

Drew Slocum:

John Demeter on the podcast, I’ll do an intro before this, but essentially wanted to talk today about, just specifically, more on the Clean Agent market since you’ve been heavily involved with Wesco and the different Halon companies that you’ve had over the years. And what’s happening with that politically? You know, it’s probably past political now; it’s actually becoming real. Yeah, I’ve been in the industry, at least working with Tyco. I think I started with Tyco on the fire product side in 2008. And it was talked about then with the Novec 1230 transition. So it’s interesting that it’s, you know, 13, 14 years later that something’s finally happening.

John Demeter:

Well, just to pick up on what you just said, Wesco, we’re in the Clean Agent suppressions business. We buy, we recycle, and we resell the whole range of clean fire, uh, protection agents, you know, HFCs and Halons, uh, Novak, 1230. But I remember we’ve been a member of the board of both Hark and HRC, the HA Recycling Corporation, for probably going on 25 years. And, on the committee on the board, as long as I can remember, it was 3M. And when I got there, I think I joined the board a couple of years after the organization started, and 3M was selling C 410, which was their clean agent CEA 410.

And I think shortly after, you know, we got involved with, with Hark, they pulled it from the market. It was not something that was sustainable. And they kept on showing up at the Hark meetings. I’m going, I wonder what they’re doing here. I mean, they don’t have an agent. What are they doing here? And this went on for five years. Good guys. They contributed, and they participated in the industry. I go, I wonder what they’re doing here. And then we found out <laugh> Yeah, yeah, with Novak. And now it looks like, you know, Novak is in the catbird seat.

Drew Slocum: (

Yeah. That’s crazy. What year was that? When you were in those meetings and, you know, 3M was, too?

John Demeter:

We joined Hark and HRC, probably in 97 or 98. Okay. 19 97, 19 98. And CE 410, I think, was kind of on its way out, and they also had issues with foam that came up too. They talked about their issues in foam, which we know most about right now, but CEA 410 went away. Um, I think that Pol was probably the only, or one of the few manufacturers that signed on, to distribute CEA 410. And then it went away, and then in that period, you know, call it 2001, write up, I’m trying to think of when Novak sort of broke. I remember when they talked about making the, maybe it was 2007 or eight, they would know, of course. It was that span of five or six years. So I really wondered, you know, what 3M was doing. But now they’ve positioned themselves really well.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah.I remember it being on the Today Show at one point. That was before

John Demeter:

Yep. That’s interesting. With what’s his name? I can’t think of his name. I know who was on there. Yeah. I forgot who it was.

Drew Slocum:

I know we didn’t get into it, but John, you know, you’ve been in the industry for, I guess, give it a little background on yourself. Then we’ll kind of give some context to this. Well, we jumped right into it, which people probably love to hear. But just give a little background in yourself, and we’ll, we’ll kind of get into that.

John Demeter:

Yeah. Sort of a born and raised into fire protection. A couple of years outside the industry, after college and working in Washington for a large trade association, I returned to a family business. And we were in the portable fire extinguisher business. I ran that from the early eighties to the early nineties. Ended up selling that business to Kitty back then. And invested in a company called Wall Parts and Supply. You, Don Wall. You may have known Don Wall. Don Wall was my partner for a while. Alright. Don and I were in the wholesale parts business for a while, and I ended up buying out his position. And, it was funny to this day, I still remember being in the parts business, not figuring out, not knowing really how you make any money in the parts business.

It was a difficult business to be in. But while we were there, while we were in this wholesale, it was sort of a Brooks wannabe, you know, at, at the time, in the mid-nineties, we started getting phone calls from distributors. You know, it would go like, Hey, we’ve got 500 pounds of 1301. Do you know anybody who needs any? We say we’ll try to find out. And the next day we get a call from somebody, Hey, we need 500 pounds, 1301, you know, anybody who’s gardening any. And so we started, you know, connecting A with B and realized that we’re making more money in this business than we were in the parts. But, so we sort of morphed into this recycling business, which we’ve been in with both feet now since, you know, 1995. Um, you know, we are a fairly active importer of Halos 1301.

We’ve worked in 26 different countries importing and exporting. We enjoy it here. We have got a decent distribution, both bulk and service work, you know, and our work with bulk, you know, selling aviation. Sure. And petrochemical. We do a fair amount of good service work for all the agents, you know, FM 201 25 and Novec 1230. So that’s, that’s where we are. You know, we have been together as a group for a long time, and the average employee is about ten years with us. So we enjoy ourselves, we’re having fun.

Drew Slocum:

That’s great. Yeah. I know. You’re also heavily involved in the trade associations; as you said before, I know you’re the past president of FSSA, I believe.

John Demeter:

Yeah. Past president of FSSA, active, not so much this last year or so, but until then, very active on the board. Um, good organization, you know, it’s a powerhouse of information. It’s a great place to assemble like nothing but good things to say about FSSA as well as Nathan. You know, Nathan has been around longer. It’s a much bigger organization and a real quality organization run by both quality people.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. I think I was at the last live FSSA.  Uh, they did a virtual in the last year. So they’ve actually done a very good job through Covid and with everything happening. They’ve had a lot of town halls about AIM. Yep. About the foam firefighting foam, I’d love to have a podcast coming up here soon on that. Yeah. Um,

John Demeter:

Yeah. Well, Catherine Adrian, as you know, is running it this year. I think her office is up, and she’s done a great job. She’s expanded it. They’ve done some great business going overseas and expanding contacts. So it’s a rock-solid organization. Yeah. And Todd, Todd Stevens, of course, was president before Catherine. And my joke was, Todd, when I was president, there was no Covid; you became president of that Covid. So I don’t know if there’s any relationship there, but you better think about that. <laugh>,

Drew Slocum:

He did do that Purple Live virtual event, which was tough, but you know what? Hey, if you’re dealt a hand, you know, you gotta roll with it. Right.

John Demeter:

It worked out much better than I thought it would. Yeah. You know, much better. The only thing that was missing was the bar, you know, at the end of the day. But it’s <laugh>.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah.

John Demeter:

But you No, you’re right. You know you adapt to circumstances.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. And this year, it’ll be fun. I’ll be heading down there, hopefully, you know, we’ll see you down there as well, and

John Demeter:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s big ones. It’s the 40th Anniversary.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. I remember that. I think I’m gonna try to do something on the podcast down there while we’re, while we’re there too. Might as well. Good idea. I did it

John Demeter:

Last year, and they’d be happy. I’m sure they’d do some publicity for you, letting people know that you’re gonna be down there. Yeah. That’s a good idea. Yeah.

Drew Slocum:

It’s good. So, yeah, it’s a great background. I guess, you know, we have a wide listenership to the podcast. You know, they might not know about AIM, or they might not even know about fire suppression as far as LON FM 200 and now Novec 1230, and then beyond that. So what is, what is the need for clean agents and fire suppression? What are the main channels and, you know, who’s doing that work? You know, just give a, just a basic intro.

John Demeter:

Well, the category is commonly referred to as clean agents, you know, clean fire suppression chemicals. And they’re called clean because they put the fire out and leave no residue, unlike water or dry powder, or foam, which contaminate and can ruin equipment. Clean agent chemicals are gaseous. They put the fire out and leave no residue. Up until the mid-nineties, it was LON 1301, and LON 1211, of course, is a streaming agent. Halan 1301 is a total flooding agent. And it was really the only game in town.  And then, of course, in the late eighties, they realized the damage being done to the ozone layer because of ozone-depleting chemicals like HALON 1301 and Refrigerants R11 and R12. And the world moved pretty quickly, from when they discovered that this could be causing a serious environmental issue to when a treaty was signed in 1994, which essentially banned the production of almost all ozone-depleting substances.

They moved very, very quickly. So, there was a lot of 1301 pumped into the marketplace. Aviation, military, commercial, petrochemical, mainly the North Slope, over the years and when the ban was put into effect, I’m sure you’re aware of this, and your listeners probably are too. there were a number of industries, aviation being, you know, one of them that had not found a substitute for LON 1301, you know, FM 200 was moving nicely into, you know, data centers and telecommunication sites, but aviation and petrochemical and Marine, for a while had no alternative to Helon 1301. And the agreement was that you could continue to use HALONs as long as they were gotten from the recycled market. You know, which is basically what we do, right?

We look for HALONs that are no longer needed, you know, redundant. We buy them, bring ’em back here to our factory, recycle them, and sell them back into distribution. And again, that distribution is mainly commercial aviation and the North Slope of Alaska petrochemical. In the 20 years since it was banned, you know, HFCs, specifically FM 200 and FFE 125, HFC 125 Trade, and NAS FFW 125, came into the marketplace and started doing a really good job at replacing clean agents where they were needed. You know, again, data centers were still in a growth,  I guess between early  2012, 2015, maybe 2010, 2012, it made a huge dent in the mark. They were the only ones there.

Then Novec, then 3M, you know, introduced Novc, which is a clean agent,  a different kind of a clean agent. It’s in a liquid form. It’s stored in a liquid and disperses as a gaseous agent. They began looking for market share. And they gathered it. It’s a good agent.  there came another environmental issue because while HFCs FM 200 and FEU 25 were not ozone depleters, they were intense global warmers. Oh, yep. And, you started to hear, coming from 3M, we’d be doing the same thing, mentioning, Hey, you got an environmental issue here. And, and at that time, ‘08 or ‘09, climate change had been with us for a long time.

Sure. And you started hearing about HFCs in relation to climate change. And, it became wrapped up in that scientific and political movement that says you’ve gotta do whatever you can to get rid of global warming gases and HFC. HFC had a target on there when it came to that. They try to pass a cap and trade legislation back in ‘09, and in ‘10, that failed. But the issue remains, you know, the idea of eliminating or phasing out or phasing down HFCs. That idea has been with us for a very long time. You know, my point here is that what happened with the AIM Act, you know. Let me jump into this AIM act; in January 2020, Congress passed, and President Trump signed the AIM Act.

It’s the American Innovation and Manufacturing Acts. And essentially, what it did, what it locked into, the law was a plan over a 15-year period, from 2021 to 2036, to phase down the production and importation of all HFCs.  Not a phase-out, but a phase-down. You know, we’ve been hearing about this issue virtually all the time about the environmental issues with HFCs, with FMT.  Novec, of course, has no environmental issues or none that we know of right now.

Drew Slocum:

None. None that we know of right now. I always feel I’ll put my little spin on this, it’s like, I feel like,  as more research is done, and, you know, different studies come out, there’s always something better, right? You could always get cleaner and greener and, you know, what’s the next thing? Right?

John Demeter:

<laugh>, there’s always sand and water <laugh>, you know, but there was a, a battle, fairly public between, the Novec producers and the FMT owner producers. And the argument coming from DuPont, who was the manufacturer at the time, was yes, there will likely be a phase-down and not a phase-out, but a phase-down of HFCs. But don’t worry Fire protection community. You guys represent a relatively small portion of HFCs, and Refrigerations represent a very large portion of the HFC business. There will always be enough for you. You know, you will always have enough FM 200 and always enough  FFE 25, don’t worry. Now, it’s when the ink was dry on the AIM Act, and it was announced to the industry what the EPA did was not to assign an allocation before.  Let me get into the broader aspect of the AIM Act.

It was passed in 2019. It was signed in 2020, its law. And the EPA took the first nine or ten months of 2021 and put the regulations around that law, and the regulations around it now pegged a baseline for the production of HFCs. And they said that we will reduce it by 85% from this baseline over the next 15 years. And the steps are a little bit awkward. They’re not a straight-line steps. It’s a short one, and then a big one down to 40%. And we’re gonna reduce that by 85% over the next 15 years. And we will allocate to anybody who has been in this business a certain amount of allocations to either produce or import. And those allocations will go down as time progresses. So if you were paying attention, you knew all this was happening, you knew that something was gonna happen with HFCs, and an event was going to come. Well, when it was finally announced, what the EPA did, I think what the law does is, I don’t think it was the EPA, the EPA did not say, okay, going forward, you can make so many pounds of 227, and you can make so many pounds of 125. You can make so many pounds of 134 A and so many pounds of this, and so many pounds of that.

They didn’t break it down by type of gas. What they did was they asked each one of the applicants for allocations to give their mix of products that they produced over a period of time. Then they took that mix and calculated the global warming content of that mix. Right. Then they said, okay, your allocation is this percentage of global warming content. This is what you can produce. You can make whatever you wanna make, you can make FM 200, you can make FE 125, you can make 236. Or you can make 134A. You can make anything you want, but your allocation is based on global warming concepts. And that went out to, you know, all of the major manufacturers of the gases and people that we might not recognize, people that are in the refrigerator industry.

They all got a piece of these allocations. And when you began to focus on that, you realize that DuPont or now Chemours have a certain allocation, and they have to make the best use of that allocation. And what’s the way to make the best use of it? That’s to make guesses that probably make you the most money. Right? I don’t know this, but this will be going on in my head.  And as it turns out, 227 and 125, and 236, are the fire suppression gases that we’re actively involved in. Right. They are some of the highest global warmers. They had the highest global warming content of many of the gases. So every pound, of 227 or 125 or 236 that they make, they’re eating into that allocation, which means they can’t make a pound of something that they might be making more money on.

Drew Slocum:

If so, if they’re selling to the marine industry, the aerospace industry, the military industry, like, you know, there’s way more margin there than they are in the fire suppression industry.

John Demeter:

I don’t know where their margins are, you know? But I know that the refrigerant market is really big. Yeah. And the fire suppression market is relatively small compared to the refrigerant market. And that’s where I think their biggest customers are –  in that refrigerant market. So in addition to it being a larger market, and the fire suppression gases, 236, 125, 227 is more intense, global warmers,  thus costing them more of an allocation, the feeling was they’re gonna be leaning towards the refrigerant market and not paying too much attention to the fire protection market,  not in servicing necessarily. Sure. The fire suppression market. As the law started becoming understood, it was clear to me anyway, that if you’re a manufacturer, if you’re an equipment manufacturer, if you’re a Tyco or, or a Kidde or a Fike or a Janus, you didn’t really know what your costs were gonna be.

Right? You didn’t know what availability was gonna be—two big things. So I started asking myself, how, how do you plan then? How do you, if you’re a manufacturer of FM 200 systems, plan for 2022 and 2023 if you don’t know what your costs will be? And you don’t know if they’re gonna be able to deliver on time. Cuz again, I’m not privy to conversations, let’s say, between Chemours and Ansel or Fike, and I don’t know what went on there. Still, based on the announcements these companies have made, just this morning, you know, Janus announced that they are out of the FM 200 business as of February 1st, 2022. Now they’ll fill orders that might come in the house in January, but they’re essentially out of the HFC business with FM 200.

Interesting. They didn’t do FFE25. The Kidde announcement and the Fike announcement, I think they’re the only three companies whose announcements I’ve seen. They were a little bit more cautious. Well, we don’t know for sure when there’s gonna be a problem; the price will go up. We don’t know how high and availability might be an issue. So we suggest you start selling water mist and inerts. Yeah. And I’m not quoting them, but that was the tone of their message to the distributors. And on top of that, 3M is a good company. They’ve got a good product. I mean, everybody likes Novak 1230. But on top of that, a lot of the buyers, the end users, you know, the big telecoms, they’re all heavily involved in sustainability.

Sure. You know, I’d venture to say that most of them have a sustainability vice president. Or somebody whose job it is to keep tabs on how they’re building our factories and what we’re putting in them. And with HFCs and an alternative that’s not a global warmer, I think if it comes across the desk of a sustainability vice president, and you’ve got the option between a Novec 1230 agent and an HFC, they’re gonna be hard-pressed to go with the HFC.

Drew Slocum:

I feel it is that way. When I was doing more clean agent, you know, consulting when I was with Viking and Tyco, or, you know, helping out Minimax a little at Viking, it was already kind of going that way anyway. Like, why are you gonna make the decision? There was a little price difference, but there wasn’t much there. And then you put this in front of it where you install a system with FM 200, if the system goes off, you know, ten years later, are you gonna be able to find the agent? And if you do, I mean, yeah. Obviously, there might be an opportunity for Westco to refill that.

John Demeter:

Well, that’s a whole separate issue. But you’re right. The last Halon 1301 system was manufactured probably in 1992, and we’re still servicing them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. <laugh>. And so it’s probably at least as much FM 200 out there as there was 1301 out there. Sure. So I wouldn’t call it job security, but yeah. We think we’re gonna be servicing, you know, clean agent systems for, for a long time. But again, I don’t wanna be putting too much weight on the sustainability officers. Still, it’s not just will you be able to recharge it in 10 years; it’s, if that system goes off, it’s reportable, and somebody there is gonna be responsible for reporting the carbon footprint of that company that year. Right? And they don’t want it in that. They just don’t want that in their carbon footprint. No. So here’s why.

Drew Slocum:

Hey, at least there’s an alternative, right? There are inerts out there, there’s obviously FM 200, you can get into the water ERs, you can get into some crazy detection with pre-action systems. I’m worried about the firefighting foam market where not only just firefighters just in general, with their agents on the trucks, but just the fixed foam systems. Like there’s really no alternative right now. And I mean, there are without the PFOS and PFO in there, but there’s not a great alternative. So I think the industry’s been very good over the years we’ve come up with solutions, I think we’ll get through it. But, you know, I think, you know, everything with HFC  everybody’s known. It’s been coming for a while, so it’s not like it’s news.

John Demeter:

Yeah. It’s not a surprise, you know, the surprise was, well, we thought there would always be enough for us, but the way the law was written and the regulations were put together, there might not be enough. And again, I don’t even know. I’m not privy to these conversations, but I mean, Chemours must have their production plan that’s set in place right now. They must know what they’re gonna do. But, when you see announcements, you know, from Janus and Fike, it wasn’t clear. Don’t worry, guys. We got you covered for the next three years. Cuz Fike wouldn’t be making, I mean, Janus wouldn’t be making this announcement if they knew they were covered for the next three years. I don’t know. I’ve heard the word hospice used in relation to the HFCs and fire protection.

It’s, you’re in hospice, it’s slowly going away and, and it’ll be replaced by other stuff, you know, and going back to FSSA for a quick second year, you know, three or four years ago, maybe five years ago, I think several people on the board were bringing this thing up. But we always  thought of ourselves as the clean agent trade association. But we were special hazards. And it was not a fight, but it was a discussion over the course of a couple of years and say, you know, we’re more than just clean agents. Right? You know we’re special hazards. You know, we’re waterous, and we’re in earths. We’re not just, you know, before that it was the, you know, the FSA was, was fondly or not so fondly known as that the Halong Country Club, <laugh>, you know, a bunch of rich guys own these big businesses and going off to nice places every year to having a conference. But it’s not, it’s, it’s probably more one of the world’s leading technical correct associations when it comes to, uh, uh, special hazard fire protection. But anyway, so special hazards, you know, is, is broadened now detection place a big role in that. I, you know, there have even been F S S A presidents and executives who said, you know, I’m an executive in this association, and clean agents make 5% of my business. Right. You know, it’s, I know it’s not that,

Drew Slocum:

Not, I mean, look at, you look at all the members and, you know, in Inspect Point became a member a couple of years ago now, um, and I went, you know, because they’re, they’re heavily involved in service and inspection and all that. Still, they’re not, they’re, they’re kind of full range companies at F S A. It’s, it’s, yeah. Special hazards are a focus, but if they do, you’re right. The majority of their businesses come in from the everyday fire alarm, the everyday extinguisher, and the everyday sprinkler. Yeah. So, um, but there’s a lot of thought, some great thought leaders there, and, um, yeah, it’s been fun to be, to be members and, um, yeah, they do have, they do have a nice annual truck that is, it is quite nice.

John Demeter:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a no, by the way, the planning for these conferences begins about four weeks after the last one ends. Wow. So they put a Steve Rice, who you probably know from the prestigious Wow. You know, is the chair of the planning committee and does an enormous amount of work, probably out 11 months, 10 or 11 months into planning the conference. So, yeah. Yeah, it’s good. Yeah, that’s great. But, you know, but, but if I can just go back to the, to the AM act, uh, for a second, um, the, you know, the, the EPA, um, I think went out of their way to make sure that nothing in this legislation screwed anybody up really bad. Uh, and, and, and stuck somebody who really needed, you know, an HFC without any, any fire protection. So what they did was, in addition to these allocations, especially before the allocations were given out, they identified certain users and critical users of HFCs and gave them their own allocations like the military’s got its own allocation. Wow. Commercial aviation has got its own allocation. Um, I think, I never knew this, but there’s a, there’s a, a cottage industry making bear spray. Did you know that <laugh> Bear Bear spray?

Drew Slocum:

I’ve had Bear spray, you know Brett Stratton, right? Yeah. Do you know Brett? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of his guys, Carl, I think I went camping once when I know those guys, <laugh>, he let me borrow his bear spray. Uh, but I didn’t look at the ingredients to see what was in it.

John Demeter:

<laugh>. It’s, it’s an HFC, and it, it somehow they must have had a good lobbyist, and they got to the EPA, and they said, you’ve gotta pay attention to this. So, Bears spray has its own allocation. So, you know, the other one of the things that, that, that were talked about are being talked about is price. What’s gonna happen to the price? And then, you know, the initial reaction was, well, it’s gotta go up. If you’re constricting supply, it’s gotta go up, and it probably will; in 2022, the production drops 10% from the baseline. And it’s not really a big hit. The big hit comes in 2024 when it drops 40% of the baseline. But I think that in the first year, there’s gonna be enough quantity, enough volume of availability of, of, of 2 27 and 1 25 that you’re not gonna see that dramatic increase.

I could be wrong about that, but, you know, I think there’s a fair amount of 227 in the country right now that got in or will get in before the deadline. If, if, if you, if you could bring in 227 until December 31st this year after that, you’ve gotta have an allocation. So I know that gas is coming in; it’s gonna be stocked with the manufacturers. They’ll have it there as a buffer. Sure. So, I, I don’t see necessarily that if it does spike it, I don’t think it’s gonna be cuz of a demand. It might be cuz people think they can raise the price and still get it. Or maybe they wanna raise the price and make it go away. Yeah. You know, that, how do you make, how do you make people buy Item B is by pricing item A. Right. You know, uh, higher than, than people wanna pay.

Drew Slocum:

So, well, like, like I said before, hey, there are alternatives, which is, you know, which is a good thing, right? Yeah. Um,

John Demeter:

So yeah. And, frankly, and demands in general, you know, the FSA has been trying to get a handle on this for a year, and I think we got a decent start trying to understand if our industry is growing or shrinking, special hazards. And I think when, when it comes to the clean Asian aspect of, of, of special hazards, I think you’d had to say it’s been, at best it’s been flat for the past five years, seven years. Yeah.

Drew Slocum:

I would say because I know a lot of clean agent suppression is super specific. You know, there’s, it’s been around for a while, so this, you know, there’s nothing, there’s no crazy industry that’s really, you know, pushing it forward and at least in the US. Yep.

John Demeter:

Yeah. But another thing is that this law only applies to the United States. You can ship HFCs outside the US; it will not impact your allocation. So I think many of these companies have got significant overseas businesses so that, that isn’t impacted by, uh, by, uh, by this legislation.

Drew Slocum:

Interesting. That’s interesting because I know that the Middle East is traditionally a big proponent of clean agents, right? Yeah. But they’ve kind of, yeah,

John Demeter:

They’re big that,

Drew Slocum:

That’s that push more toward Novec though overall, I believe, don’t they push more toward Novec?

John Demeter:

I  think the; I think it’s a price market. Yep. Over there. If you’re selling 227 in the Middle East, you probably have more leeway to reduce the price than you would be selling Novik. We don’t do much business over there. So I, I’m, I’m guessing a little bit at that. Um, but yeah, it does not affect, so if you’re a Janus, Kidde, or Fika, you can ship; you continue to ship to overseas customers and not have to eat into your allocation.

Drew Slocum:

Interesting. But you, you can’t ship it here. You can’t ship it nationally?

John Demeter:

You can if you can import, well, yes. In order to manufacture it or import it, you need an allocation. So if you’ve produced 50,000 pounds, it’s eaten into your allocation. But if you take that 50,000 pounds and ship it to Saudi Arabia, you get a credit back.

Drew Slocum:

Gotcha.

John Demeter:

So-net zero, it doesn’t eat into your allocation.

Drew Slocum:

Gotcha. All right. So it’s an allocation thing, but, you know, some of those manufacturers of those agents might start weaning back on it.

John Demeter:

Yeah. It’s gonna be interesting to watch. You know, I don’t know. They, again, I, if you accept the hospice theory and that, and that FM 225 are basically in hospice right now, just waiting for the patient to die if you run a manufacturing company. I just don’t know how you depend on that. I dunno how you don’t start making plans for life, you know, without FM 200.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah, no, that’s interesting. It was just a random question that popped into my mind. You probably know this cuz you were on the extinguisher side. So is there a, you know, the only clean agent extinguishers I’ve seen out there are HFC ones is there a, uh, a Novak?

John Demeter:

One there? There’s Halon Tron. Well, Halon Tron has got its own issues there. There’s you’re talking about; you’re talking about portable.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. Yeah. I thought, is Haran not an HFC?

John Demeter:

Halo Tron is partly an HCFC. Oh. Um, and it’s, it’s controlled, so it was controlled before the HFCs were controlled. It was a class two ozone depleter. And there are controls over the production of the ingredients that go into Halo Tron. The EPA came out with regulations. I listened to them explain how the regulations on the ingredients for Halo Tron were gonna act. They, they, they allowed for a servicing tale. They were concerned; people were concerned that there would not be enough Halon Tron to service the units out there. Right. So the EPA approves a certain quantity for a servicing tail. That is, you can produce this stuff in order to service things, but if you’re manufacturing new ones, new halo extinguishers, you still can, Right? You could only use a recycled halo.

Drew Slocum:

Interesting.

John Demeter:

Do you follow me? Yeah. So they’re trying to explain this and that the distributor will have to carry two different kinds of halo, recycled and nonrecycled. And

Drew Slocum:

Wow.

John Demeter:

The labeling was an issue. And, as I was listening to this, I said, so the way I summed it up is that the old stuff, the recycle stuff has to be used for the new stuff, the new equipment, and the new stuff. The new Halon Tron can only be used on the old stuff. <laugh>. That’s, that’s how it goes. And they, they, they said they tried to turn that into some sort of a marketing thing, but they couldn’t quite, uh, get it. But, uh, wow. Anyway, but 236, speaking of clean streaming agents, you know, 236 is more potent than 227 and 125 when it comes to global warming capacity. It’s really, I forget what the number is, it’s 10,000 something or other, but it’s very potent. I don’t see 236 or clean guard as an important part of the industry.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah.

John Demeter:

See, I don’t think it’s seen many of many. I don’t think it was that big of a marketplace. When Haun 1211 went away, I think it lost its pizzazz.

Drew Slocum:

Sure. Yeah. I think I’ve seen some Amerex has come out with some recently – HalonTron extinguishing, you know, portables.

John Demeter:

Well, there’s a new agent, a new streaming agent that’s predominantly being used in aviation called BTP. Okay. Don’t ask me for the long chemical name, but it’s been around for a long time. BTP is a small ozone depleter and somewhat of a global warmer, but after ten years of looking, aviation could find nothing to replace 1211 nothing. They tried 36 and Halon Tron, and nothing was gonna satisfy the mainframe manufacturers that didn’t fit in that same size bottle in that same size bracket with the same weight as 1211. Right now, BTP is not the same, but BTP came the closest, and in the end, they go, okay, we’ll use BTP. And so they started manufacturing it. I think Amerex was the first one, and Amerex is manufacturing them right now. And they’re supplying; I think, all new planes. Yep. And even retrofits are getting 1211s coming off and BTP portables building.

Drew Slocum:

Interesting. Okay. All right. Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of it lately, and we, you know, work a lot with Amerex on our platform. Yeah. Have a nice partnership with them. So I probably see a lot of their stuff in my feed <laugh>. Yeah.

John Demeter:

Yeah.

Drew Slocum:

Right, right. It’s been great talking about the AIM Act and things like that. I don’t know if you have any insight on this, but, you know, I think the AIM Act will settle out. I don’t think there’s gonna be too much of an issue with it because it’s been around for a while. There are alternatives, and people are informed, which is great. I think that’s how some of, you know, fire protection progresses. We create solutions if we have time, right? The whole foam thing that’s a whole different issue. That’ll get worked out. But obviously, it’s quite a shorter timetable.

John Demeter:

The foam issue’s gonna be around much longer.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. That’ll be a lot longer. And there’s no alternative. So that’s the big thing that’s gonna kind of keep it going. And right now, it’s state to state. And again, I’ve had a slightly decent podcast on that once. I’m gonna do another one cuz it’s coming up. I get questions more and more about it, you know, just, Hey, do I, what, what do I do? Do I inspect these foam systems or not just turn them away because there’s liability there? So, yeah.

John Demeter:

Have you talked to Tom Cortina? You know, Tom Cortina is the guy.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. I’m gonna try to get Tom on. I have a message in for him. I’ll try to reach out at some point, but he’ll be a good resource. Yep.So, lithium-ion battery fire. Right?  I’ve seen some, and I don’t know if they’re fake or not. I don’t know what to believe when I look online these days.

John Demeter:

I’ve seen them too.

Drew Slocum:

Some battery fires utilizing, I don’t know if it’s Halon or if it’s Novec or it’s FM 200. Have you had any experience? I mean, what do the clean agents do to lithium-ion battery fires?

John Demeter:

Drew, only what I read. You know, we’ve heard about the explosion in Phoenix that caused quite a bit of damage. We’ve heard about cell phones on airplanes. Right? You know, catching fire. I’ve seen videos of cell phones or about them being dropped into a liquor.

Drew Slocum:

That’s the ones I’ve seen.

John Demeter:

Yeah. And there’s an NFPA committee right now set up to look at just that. Yeah. I don’t think anything that’s out there right now is an answer. Yeah, certainly not 1211 or 1301, none. I don’t think any of the HFCs were ever gonna be an answer. I know I’ve heard of large battery backup trucks being designed with Novec fluid Interesting in it for suppression. Um, but I don’t think there’s a real solution yet. Yeah. Satisfactory answer. Yeah. To that question, what do we do with lithium-ion batteries? I mean, they’re pretty nasty fires. You’ve seen those things. Yeah. Yeah. Fire, it’s a tough thing to put out.

Drew Slocum:

You know, a lot of firefighters, volunteer or whatever, they’re having to go through training on some of the different vehicles on the roads, and what you do. You kind of just let it burn. Right? You know, get everybody out, and Yeah. You know?

John Demeter:

Yeah, just get everybody out and let the thing burn. Yeah. I’ve also seen some of those videos of an EV on the road catching fire. And that’s now. What do you do when 10 or 15% of all the cars on the road are EVs Yeah. You know,

Drew Slocum:

That probably be in the next ten years, I would think. I mean it, yeah.

John Demeter:

Yeah. Based on what I see around my neighborhood here, you know, the number of Teslas on the road is increasing yearly.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. I’m actually looking potentially at getting one. I don’t know if I’ll get one or not, but <laugh> I’m always worried about the batteries. You know, the sustainability of ’em. And then, obviously, I think the safety’s fine. It’s just, you know, it’s an issue.

John Demeter:

I’m okay with horsepower. I’m okay with my internal combustion engine for now. I mean, I would; by the way, they are some of the fastest cars. They’re some of the quickest cars, you know, in the world right now. You know, the high-end Teslas are, Yeah. Monsters at the zero to 60. Yeah.

Drew Slocum:

It crushes the Maseratis and Lamborghini, doesn’t it? Everything.

John Demeter:

Yeah. Everything. But where do I plug it in, and what do I do if I’m halfway to Atlantic City and I’m running low? What do I do?

Drew Slocum:

<laugh>? I think that’ll be solved pretty quickly. And, you know, yeah. There’s an issue there. But I think it’ll continue to move that way. It’s a huge market.

John Demeter:

Yeah. It’s huge. And, you know, and the other issue too, and I don’t know,  it’s not what we were gonna talk about, but the other issue is the overall environmental impact of these green energy items. Whether they’re windmills, right?  Or, electric vehicles, you know that lithium has gotta come from somewhere, and you gotta do some awfully dirty mining to get that lithium and the disposal of it. too. You know, what do we do with an EV that’s come to the end of its life? Well, listen, maybe by then, there’ll be a whole industry dedicated to disposing of EVs properly.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. Maybe a recycling company will take all EVs and use them for something. <laugh>.

John Demeter:

Right. Yeah. I had somebody tell me once that he was in the battery business, the car battery business and he said, we only made money on taking the old battery back. We made no money selling new batteries. We made our money on recycling old batteries. Interesting. That’s that

Drew Slocum:

AutoZone and all of them do too. They make money on the ones you return, and you’re paying them. Exactly. You’re paying them to get rid of it, and they’re making money out of it. Right.

John Demeter:

<laugh>. Right, right, right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting. It’s gonna be an interesting next five or ten years, you know.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah, it’s exciting. I’d love to talk to you again, maybe have you on when we’re down in Bonita Springs at the FSSA event here in February. Yeah. I’ll be doing something live, hopefully there for sure. But, getting to that, I try to do a quick response round with every guest I have on. So you have no idea what questions are coming, and I’d love to get your feedback on ’em. So, with us talking cars, I’ve heard you’re a big car guy now. What do you like Shelby Cobra from the late sixties or a Corvette from the late sixties?

John Demeter:

I’m a Corvette guy. In my garage is a 2003 50th anniversary edition Corvette. It’s got 31,000 pampered miles on it. <laugh> The minute the weather here in Jersey starts to turn, I cover it. And I don’t uncover it until the weather turns nice.  I’m a Corvette guy—the Cobras, you know, Shelby Cobra’s a close second.

Drew Slocum:

<laugh>. That’s funny. Yeah. My uncle, I don’t know if he listens to a podcast or not, but he had, I forgot he had a ‘69 Corvette, well, back in the day, in the seventies or eighties, I forgot. But, a C3S.

Yeah. And he got a kit card and built it himself. He got a 60-68 Shelby Cobra that he did. Yeah. Yeah. The funny part,  I talked to him during the holidays, and he’s all about Teslas now. <laugh> really! He’s like, I’m done with internal combustion engines, which is crazy cuz he has been a car nut forever, and he’s just obsessed with Teslas. And, you know, uh, it’s kind of funny.

John Demeter:

I’ve got two close friends, both of them bigger car nuts than me. Both of them grew up in the horsepower era. One of them says I will never drive an electronic, an EV in my life. The other one says I want one now. <laugh>. You know, so I find it striking.

Drew Slocum:

That’s great.! Next question here. What is the craziest installation you’ve ever heard of? A suppression system, the use, or where it was the odd one or the one that nobody would ever think of?

John Demeter:

Well, we’ve had to decommission 1301 systems that were in an elevated room on top of a building with only the narrowest of staircases to get you up to that elevated building. Right. That was kind of crazy. We’ve seen 20,000 pound systems on the 12th floor of a building that was about to be demolished. Oh, gosh. And thank God, the freight elevator wasn’t that far. <laugh>. Yeah, well, you know, the 1301 sensors were put everywhere, you know,  just everywhere. But those are probably the two wildest ones.

Drew Slocum:

We’re doing a little promo this week because it’s the holiday season on the craziest deficiencies you’ve ever seen in servicing a system. So I’m very intrigued to what comes back <laugh> from the field, and we’re giving a prize away.

John Demeter:

Well, you know, we ran this in one of our newsletters about how somebody,  not in the US but overseas, they were called into service a system, pulled the tank out, brought it to the facility, and found it filled with sand. Wow.

Drew Slocum:

Sand. Wow.

John Demeter:

Interesting. So I, again, I don’t know where it was. We ran that and immediately got a phone call from 3M. Where did you hear about this? Tell us where it is. Yeah. That’s what we know.

Drew Slocum:

Ah, that’s funny.

John Demeter:

Um, yeah. But, by the way, as we move into the latter years of 1301 and two to seven, contamination is an issue. Oh. You know, contamination of gas that’s out there right now, it’s been recycled. It’s an issue. You know, the NFPA revised its 2001 standard a couple of years ago and said if you’re a distributor, you’re filling tank A with FM 200. You’re taking that FM 200 out of tank B that you just pulled out of a facility; down the road, if you want to be in compliance, you gotta sample that tank B, make sure that it complies with ASTM, and then fill the tank. So they’re beginning to understand that not everybody is careful about servicing, and not everybody worries that the gas assets in the tank, you know, comply with either ISO or ASTM standards. So, that’s the contamination I think is gonna be an issue. It is an issue. It’s an issue right now in certain industries.

Drew Slocum:

With that, another question, there’s obviously some troubles within the industry, whether it be labor or just recruiting talent or, you know, customer buy-in with a lot of the troubles building in the economy and all that. What do you see over the next five years as the greatest challenge to the fire protection industry as a whole?

John Demeter:

You hit on one. I think labor. I mean, at board meetings more than once, survey and go, on a scale of one to ten, how big of a problem is labor? You know, one is the worst and ten is no problem. And you see hands go immediately it’s the single biggest issue. And that was pre covid. Yeah,

Drew Slocum:

Yeah.

John Demeter:

You know, now it’s only gotten worse. FSSA is doing this, we need to dig down a little bit further into the tech schools and into the programs that train would-be electricians and would-be plumbers to be would-be fire technicians. I think that’s an issue. The lithium-ion fire is an issue. That’s gonna be a, a big, a much bigger part of the fire hazard going forward, and we still don’t have a way to put it out. No,

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. I have some ideas to do a  podcast in the first quarter of next year with my industry friend, Christina Francis, who was at Proctor and Gamble; she now works for Tesla. I’m interested to see what they are doing. They’re smart people over there, so I’m sure they’ve got people on this.

John Demeter:

Yes. Tesla must be working on this somewhere.

Drew Slocum:

Right. They’ve got to, I mean, because they’re the biggest car company in the world. Right. You know, they’ve got enough money to work on it. And I think if they solve it, it’s another issue that they can put under their hands.

John Demeter:

You know, what I think is to me is an equally interesting question, and that is, if you look at all of our manufacturers today, the equipment manufacturers, they should be the ones working on this. I wonder if they are.

Drew Slocum:

I know.

John Demeter:

You know, I mean, maybe they are, maybe they are. Listen, if I were doing it, I might not be telling the world yet. That’s true. But I hope they are. That’s true.

Drew Slocum:

I hope they are too. I hope there’s something there. And then, you know, it’s a ripe opportunity.

John Demeter:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the person who figures that out…. I don’t think they’re gonna get another Elon Musk, but you’re gonna make, you’re making a lot of money. But it’s really; it’s our job to kind of figure that out, I would think.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. No, totally.

John Demeter:

I just don’t know. Again, I’d love to see the data, but we never will in our industry. How much money is going into real R&D. I mean, really forward-thinking, you asked the question five years from now, what do you think? I wonder how much money is going into R&D in our fire suppression business.

Drew Slocum:

I think with consolidation and all stuff pointing to numbers; it’s definitely gone backward over the last 10 to 15 years. I just remember working for some of the manufacturers; some great ideas are out there. It’s just; I feel like it’s stalled with some of the, you know, throwing stuff on the wall to see if it sticks. Now, it’s put through the whole process where it goes through, and I’m a Six Sigma person. I’m a big process person, but it goes through the rigamarole of, you know, what the profit’s gonna make the day one when the ROI is gonna happen. And it kind of shoots down a lot of ideas. That’s from the sprinkler side, but, you know.

John Demeter:

On the suppression side, you can kind of make the same case. I’m not trying to be bad about some of the consolidations, but some of these companies lived and died ten years ago or 15 years ago through their production of fire suppression equipment. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, whether they be handheld portables or clean agent systems. Now some of those same companies are a couple of line items. Yeah. Products on a much bigger mix. Sure. And, the people, they’re all good. We know who they are, and they’re good people, but they’re competing with all the other products. Oh yeah. And, I dunno, it’s gonna be interesting.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s some good innovation definitely on the software side and some of the tech side, which we’re involved in. So, it will be interesting to see how that takes off.

One last question. We’re running late. You know, we’re right up at the hour. I wanna keep it, you know, just to keep people engaged, and we’ll definitely have you on in February. So, you’re not a North Jersey guy; you’re not a South Jersey guy?

John Demeter:

Central. Central <laugh>. There is a central Jersey.

Drew Slocum:

So, you’re not an Eagles fan?

John Demeter:

Oh, I’m a Giants fan.

Drew Slocum:

You’re a Giants fan. That’s not Jersey, right?

John Demeter:

Yeah, it’s, well, it’s, no, we’re not North Jersey. We’re not South Jersey. We’re Central Jersey. It’s contentious here, by the way. We hate being passed over. We hate being lumped in with the North or lumped in with the South. We’re almost at the point where the Jersey Turnpike and the Parkway Crossover cross.

Drew Slocum:

Oh, it’s funny. They’re in central Jersey. I know Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert got into this once about Central Jersey <laugh>

John Demeter:

Yeah. I think one of ’em is a Jersey guy; I think I forget which one.

Drew Slocum:

I think they both live in Jersey. They’re both from Jersey. John Mackey wanted me to ask you, out of all the pizzas out there, <laugh>, out of all the cities, please rate 1, 1, 2, and 3.

John Demeter:

Yeah. I’ve got Jersey. Jersey and Jersey. <laugh>

Drew Slocum:

Jersey doesn’t have a pizza.

John Demeter:

Yeah, we do. Oh, we do. I can walk, I could leave here and drive a mile in each direction and come across a dozen pizza places that are better than Mackey’s Chicago Pizza.

Drew Slocum:

Well, Chicago’s not pizza.

John Demeter:

Like Yeah, exactly.

Drew Slocum:

Exactly. Well, what about New York? I mean, in New York, is there a Jersey style?

John Demeter:

Oh, there are great places. No, it’s New York style. No, it’s, it’s New York, New Jersey. It’s all New York style. It’s that chewy dripping with Mozzarella and grease, and the ones you can fold up.

Drew Slocum:

Show me. I’m in Connecticut now. I didn’t even realize how great New Haven Style Pizza was, but it rivals New York. I think.

John Demeter:

You know, somebody told me that same thing about Connecticut pizza. And I never would’ve thought that. I never would’ve thought it.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah. Weirdly enough.

John Demeter:

Mac Macie and I had this conversation, this running joke in one day, middle of the day, UPS or FedEx shows up with a great big box of Chicago pizzas <laugh> that were frozen <laugh>. So, of course, we immediately went home, we cooked them all up, brought ’em back here, and it ate ’em.

Drew Slocum:

You couldn’t do that with Chicago-style pizza cuz it’s a casserole. You know, you can’t do that with New York or New Haven pizza because it’s thin.

John Demeter:

Yeah. I was actually in New York yesterday with my daughter, who came up for a play. We were in Brooklyn. I tell you, I’m so amazed at how that part of New York has changed over the last several years. Down by the waterfront underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Yeah. That whole area there. It’s just absolutely amazing. Packed with people. Yeah. Having a good time.

Drew Slocum:

My wife and I were there for 11 – 12 years, and we got out a year before the pandemic

John Demeter:

Where were you living?

Drew Slocum:

We were in Green Point in Williamsburg.

John Demeter:

Oh, were you really?

Drew Slocum:

It was great, but it got a little too, you know, a little too commercialized. I mean, the pandemic kind of kicked it back down a little bit. I liked the roughness, you know, to a certain extent. I didn’t want it so commercialized.

John Demeter:

It’s very, very commercialized.

Drew Slocum:

Yeah, definitely. Down by Brooklyn Bridge and stuff like that.

John Demeter:

Yeah. Yeah. it’d been a while. I lived in Manhattan years ago, Upper West Side. Manhattan’s gone through a couple of tough years, and Covid didn’t help.

Drew Slocum:

It’ll be back. It’s already kind of on the way back.

John Demeter:

Yep.

Drew Slocum:

Well, John, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for joining the podcast today.

John Demeter:

Drew, thank you for having me. Pleasure.

Drew Slocum:

Any quick plugs? Please let us know where we can find you or anything about Wesco.

John Demeter:

Well, you can find us at www.halonbank.com. We publish a monthly newsletter that’s close to our 20th year right now, publishing our newsletter. We try to cover as much of the news of the industry as possible. If you go onto our website, you can find a link to subscribe to the Halon Herd. We’d love you to join us. And, uh, yep, that’s it.

Drew Slocum:

Great.

John Demeter:

Enjoy the industry.

Drew Slocum:

Well, have a good remainder of the year. Enjoy the holidays, and we’ll see you next year.

John Demeter:

Yeah. Thank you, and the same to you. Hope to see you soon. If not, we’ll see you in February at FSSA.

Drew Slocum:

Totally. Thanks.

This has been episode 36 of the Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. I wanted to thank again, John Demeter for coming on the podcast today to talk about the AIM Act and everything really clean agent and what we’re doing and the industry moving forward. It’s been coming – the kind of phase-out of HFCs. I think it’s a great thing. There are a lot of great alternatives out there. So there’s not really a problem. I think environmentally, let’s move forward and move on to some greater technologies. Thanks again for listening to the podcast.  A lot coming in 2022. We’re really excited at the Fire Protection Podcast and Inspect Point. So stay tuned, and we’ll see you next year. Thanks.